


My Life For Yours

by Brandeau



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Fix-It, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9505583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brandeau/pseuds/Brandeau
Summary: "On his way to his bedroom, there’s Steve’s room. Everything is still like he left it before aunt Peggy’s funeral. Tidy, immaculate, everything in the right place. Cap. Always the soldier. Maybe he had never left home in the first place. Maybe he was still doing what he had done all those years ago, only now he wasn’t fighting Nazis, but extradimensional gods and evil robots. And also Tony. Where did it all go wrong?, Tony had been asking himself that nonstop these last few days."Or sort of a fix-it of Captain America: Civil War.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkepticalPony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkepticalPony/gifts).



> I beg your forgiveness if I've made any mistakes in collocations, phrasing, conjugation or word usage. English isn't my first language and this is the first time I'm attempting to write a fiction work in the language. If you would be so kind as to correct any grammar mistakes (or any other kind of language error) you find, I would be very grateful.

_I’m not half as good at…_

_at anything as I am when I’m doing it next to you. And that’s the truth._

Tony Stark to Steve Rogers.

Avengers Prime #5

 

“Alright, kid. Good luck out there”.

As Peter leaves the car, the weight of everything that has happened finally settles on Tony. Until now, he had seemed unfazed, which had surprised him. Even the kid had noticed it a few days earlier in the flight home from Germany and had wondered why he wasn’t showing sadness, disappointment or at least anger at how things had developed in the airport and particularly what had happened to Rhodey. Had he been putting a strong appearance for Parker’s sake then? Maybe. But now, after the fight in Siberia, he is so completely worn out that he feels exhausted just by feeling anything. Now, he gradually feels his emotions coming back as Happy drives him to the compound. He tries to resist them, to banish them to the edges of his awareness. Let his unconscious mind deal with the emotional aftermath of the fall out with Steve. Isn’t that what he always does in times like this? However unsuccessful, he doesn’t know any better, short of drinking himself unconscious. But he is way past that now, thanks to Pepper. Pepper. If at least she was still around so he could open up to her, tell her how heartbroken he is . How alone… Who is he kidding? Pepper Potts could tie him to a bench and waterboard him and he still would go out of his way to keep his inner conflicts to himself. Even when his armors were coming to life in the middle of the night and attacking her in what can only be described as the most original cry for help he had ever produced, he still shut her out. That’s who he was and he had accepted it a long time ago.

“Will you be alright, boss?”, Happy asks, as Tony comes out of the vehicle. It’s already dark outside, but the Avengers’ compound shines brighter than Las Vegas, except way more depressing. Powered by the arc reactor technology, its lights are cheap and green energy the likes of which the world has never seen. An innovation that would make daddy proud. (Would it?) And yet he can never really market such innovation, because it would mean the Justin Hammers of the world would have the last piece of the puzzle they need to create their own legion of techno-powered armored super soldiers to sell to the highest bidder. Or, you know, they could give it to an Ivan Vanko wannabe and make Tony have one of those really lousy days again. As if he needed any more of those.

“Yep. Thanks for the drive. Give my regards to Pepper, will ya?”, Tony replies. “Tell her that I… Never mind. Just let her know I’m still in one piece. Except for, you know, the massive chunk of muscle tissue missing from my chest”.

_It still hurts_ , Tony thinks as he approaches the entrance of the now newer-new-Avengers’ facility. He means both the place where the arc reactor in his chest used to be, as well as the hole left by Pepper’s departure. _We’re taking a break. It’s nobody’s fault_ , he had told Steve a few days before. He almost bursts out laughing from the memory. It is obviously his fault. Steve was only so kind not to say it out loud. (Always the boy scout). But no matter what, Steve clearly thinks it was. And so does Tony. In fact, everyone does. Everyone who knows about Pepper and him breaking up, that is, which isn’t a whole lot. They’ve somehow managed to keep it away from the tabloids. Although, with the Leipzig/Halle Airport battle (what the media is calling the “superhero Civil War”, which to be honest seems like overkill) and that whole thing in Hong Kong, most news channels have their hands full. Plus TMZ had already ran a fake story about them splitting up some weeks before, so nobody would believe them now (to be fair, nobody ever believed them).

“Is there something wrong?”, Tony hears a voice say from… nowhere. Tony tries to pinpoint the location of the source, but his brain seems unable. It feels as if the voice is being fed directly into his auditory cortex. It is cool, no doubt. But kinda gross.

“Vision”, says Tony raising his voice as he walks through the front door. “What crazy experiment are you conducting now?”  
  
“Hello, Tony” says Vision’s voice inside Tony’s head. Hearing his old A.I.’s voice like this without a physical body close by reminds him of the old days when J.A.R.V.I.S. was just a butler and he was just another genius millionaire with daddy issues who slept around like there was no tomorrow.   
  
“Whatever happened to ‘Hello, sir’? Millennials have no manners”, Tony replies. The homunculus inside his brain is talking again.

“I’m currently trying to manipulate the electro-static repulsion of phonon-conducting air atoms to regulate soundwave amplitude and hence control my voice’s travelled distance”.

“Great”, Tony sighs, “so not only do I need to worry about you phasing through the bathroom wall while I’m showering, but now you’ll be more annoying than WhatsApp’s group chats”.

  
“Do you even have WhatsApp?”, Tony hears Rhodey say from his left. He turns around to find his best friend wheeling down the corridor. The sight of Rhodey brings Tony’s heart to a stop. Breathing after the incident has always been difficult (he never mentions it to anyone --last thing he needs are a demigod and a super soldier thinking he needs a babysitter), but seeing Rhodey in a wheelchair makes him feel like Mjölnir has just landed on his chest.   
  
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t mention? I have one with Thor and a girl you don’t know, Jessica something. Sorry, it’s kind of a VIP thing. Only for fun people. Maybe if you could get someone to recommend you…”

However good he is at playing the fool, Tony can’t stop thinking about the grim future that awaits for his friend. The scene of his Rhodey falling down the sky towards the airport lawn flashes through his mind and the pressure on his upper body starts to become unbearable. He quickly tries to disguise it again, but controlling his breathing is no easy feat and besides Rhodey knows him better than he knows himself.

“Hey”, Rhodey says, looking worried, as if Tony’s the one that has been handicapped forever, “don’t worry, OK? I’ll pull through this, alright? It wasn’t your fault”. Even though those words are meant to make him feel better, they only have the opposite effect on him. He is not one to cry, but he imagines this is what people must feel inside when they do.  
  
“I told Vision to take down Wilson”, Tony replies. His voice doesn’t crack, but Tony thinks it should, if he were a normal human being. “It was me. I wasn’t thinking clearly”.

“It was my fault, then”, Vision says, now fully present, after phasing down through the first floor’s ceiling. “I should have hit the target. I had no business becoming distracted like I did. Once again, I am truly sorry, James”.

Tony feels like he’s about to implode. He needs to get out of there, but if he leaves like this, feeling guilty, he won’t sleep tonight. He should’ve never engaged Cap in the first place. What was he thinking?  But he needed to be stopped. There was no other way, was there? He didn’t think it through. He had considered their power level their advantage: two high tech suits, a Teenage Mutant Nerd Spiderling, an African Human-Cat Hybrid/Diplomat/King, and one A.G.I. with a cosmic stone-thing powering his super brain. Indeed they had the advantage in terms of raw power, but it had never occurred to him what the consequences of sending an army of superpowered freaks against a team of humans would be. Some of them enhanced, but some of them… Some of them as fragile as an egg. Like himself. Like Rhodey.

“Like I said”, James replies, ”I’ll pull through. Besides, I got that techno-wizardry you invented helping me out with my physical therapy”. He does. And if for once things go smoothly, it might actually help Rhodey. Though chances are slim that he will walk unassisted again.

“That’s right, buddy”, Tony says, faking a smile that wouldn’t fool a five year old. “Now get some rest. It’s been one hell of a week”.

On his way to his bedroom, there’s Steve’s room. Everything is still like he left it before aunt Peggy’s funeral. Tidy, immaculate, everything in the right place. Cap. Always the soldier. Maybe he had never left home in the first place. Maybe he is still doing what he had done all those years ago, only now he isn’t fighting Nazis, but extradimensional gods and evil robots. And also Tony. _Where did it all go wrong?_ , Tony had been asking himself that nonstop these last few days.  He knows they had had a rough start four years ago, but since then everything had been falling into place. They were getting along, he was feeling closer to Steve with each new mission. The team was in sync. People had a habit of reminding Tony of his ego. _You just fight for yourself_ , Charlie Spencer’s mother had told him that day in MIT. It was funny, because Steve had told him the same thing on the helicarrier, all those years ago. Tony still remembers that. He is wrong though, not that he has any way of knowing that. Along all those years fighting side by side, he often wondered when would Steve see him for what he truly is. Now it doesn’t matter anymore. They are way past that. Captain America is a fugitive, he protected his mother’s murderer. And worst of all, he  lied to his face to protect Barnes.

“I’m gonna take you down, Cap”, Tony says out loud, bitterly, standing in the middle of Steve’s room, holding one of his photos. Then he switches the lights off and goes to his room to have a restless night.

***

Tony never remembers his dreams. Even in the rare occasions when he does, they quickly fade away in the first few minutes after waking up. Except for those vivid dreams he used to have after the Battle of New York, not many oniric experiences have stuck with him throughout the years. Now he is having nightmares again. In the land of imagination, where everything is possible, his mind somehow combines bits and pieces from the traumatic experiences he has lived over the last few years. Tony sees himself falling through space after blowing up Zemo’s asteroid lair. Through the wormhole behind him he can see a snowed city. He _knows_ Pepper is down there, though he can’t actually see her from this far. His chest hurts a lot and his armor is out of juice. The ground surrounding Pepper is covered in more bombs, but he can’t reach her in time. She’ll have to inject herself with gamma irradiated super soldier serum, as a last minute resort.  He is going to lose her. Tony thinks of Rhodey. He takes off his limited edition Dora The Explorer watch (somehow he is able to beneath his suit of armor) and uses the mechanism inside to restart the communication’s panel, though the rest of the suit remains non operational. He calls Rhodey. Tony can’t save Pepper, but Rhodey can. He just needs to reach him. He just needs… Suddenly, Rhodey’s voice comes through the intercom. _Tony, help me. Help me. I’m flying dead-stick._ Tony’s heart skips a beat. He looks to his left (his armor has now been replaced by a Captain America replica suit and he’s falling naked through the coldness of dead space) and sees his friend falling. _Who did this to you?_ , Tony screams to the top of his lungs, but no sound is coming out. _Who did this?! Was it Captain America? Was it Rogers?!_ Space is filled with fireworks now. Tony is about to reach the wormhole, but his body is almost frozen. Frozen like Steve. Cryonized. He can hear Rhodey’s voice  as a whisper before everything blows to Kingdom Come. _It was you._

When he wakes up, the sheets are wet with Tony’s sweat. Is it supposed to be this hot in May? The room is still dark. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., what time is it?”, Tony calls out loud, but there’s no answer. Why are the blinds closed? He doesn’t remember doing that before falling asleep. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., open the blinds. F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”. Still no answer. There’s no way there was a power outage --the reactor is meant to last for three years. Is she just being a bitch again? “F.R.I.D.A.Y., knock it off. I’m not in the mood right now”. But the A.I. remains silent even after this. F.R.I.D.A.Y. is never this dense. Something’s off. Are they under attack? Tony springs off bed, but he unintentionally uses so much force he flies several feet and lands against the wall. What is going on? Is he still dreaming? The hit really hurt… but now the pain is rapidly subduing until it is barely a numbing. Then Tony notices he is feeling light headed, sort of numbed all over. Did he… did he drink last night and blackout? But who took him to bed? He sure hopes it wasn’t Vision. _Wait, Rhodey is even worse_ , he thinks. No, there’s no way he drank. He would never do it again. Would he? Tony decides to incorporate himself cautiously, trying to make as little sound as possible, but now his body is not responding. He orders his limbs to move, but they won’t obey. What is going on? Was he drugged? Could it be Hydra? They could’ve tapped the compound’s water supply and poisoned everybody. But they thought they had destroyed the last of its cells. _Cut off one head, two more shall take its place_ , Tony remembers. If they poisoned the water supply, then Vision would be fine, but… oh, no. Rhodey. _This can’t be happening_ , Tony thinks. Not again to his friend, not after all he’s been through. And just when he’s about to have a panic attack, he notices it. His breathing. He’s breathing normally again. Even though his body is as dead as Nick Fury’s sense of humor, his autonomous nervous system is alive and well. Better than ever, actually. In fact, this feeling is unlike anything he’s felt before. After the missile’s shreds lodged in his chest, he never could breath normally again, but now it’s like he has four lungs and Tony’s pretty sure not even before his kidnapping he could breath this well.

Tony decides that no Hydra drug could make him feel this good (except maybe cocaine. Was Hydra in the coke smuggling business?). After calming down, he concentrates on his right pinky finger. _Move_ , Tony orders. _Move_ . _Move_ . After attempting that for thirty seconds, which seem like an eternity, his pinky twitches and after a full minute it makes one sudden movement and he abruptly regains full control over his body. He rolls around to face the floor, but feels dizzy and remains in a prone position. It doesn’t quite feel like being drunk, Tony thinks. Something’s different. After his head stops spinning, he decides to attempt standing up again, but something weird is happening: his body is heavier than usual. It’s a strange sensation. It’s like simultaneously weighing a ton, but at the same time being able to lift it effortlessly. Since waking up, his pupils have been slowly becoming accustomed to the darkness in the room so that now, while still in a push-up position, he can faintly distinguish his arms against the bedroom’s floor. They’re bigger. Wait, wasn’t there a carpet on his bedroom? He incorporates as fast as he can and flies through the room like the breeze, reaching the window in half a second. He becomes dizzy again and must lean against the wall. Now, a few inches away from the windows he’s sure: this isn’t his room. He’s been moved. So he was drugged after all. And the drug must have done something to his physique as well as his psyche. He desperately searches for a way to open the blinds. After failing, he crosses the room, but now he’s tripping everywhere with his own legs. (Which are also more muscular than before). After falling down for the third time, he notices his naked body. He feels like in a movie with Zach Galifianakis. Tony decides that is actually worse than being drugged by Hydra. Now his eyes are fully accustomed to the minimum brightness. There, laying on the floor sideways, he notices some other thing wrong with his humanity. _It’s bigger_ , Tony says to himself. Mesmerized by the extraordinary tale of the enlarging penis, he starts to become aroused. He doesn’t know why, but looking at his recently improved parts seems to excite him. Before long, he is fondling with himself in the middle of a dark room that might be inside a Hydra base filled with cameras and microphones. The thought of being filmed while pleasuring himself or others has never stopped Tony from enjoying the moment, but now he has even bigger things to fondle with. Plus, this realization has turned the whole scenario even darker. It’s one thing to make him more muscular, but he’s sure as hell there’s no way to make a guy’s fifth appendage larger. _Not that I haven’t tried_ , Tony thinks.

The room he is in is the weirdest he’s ever seen, and he’s seen a lot. It looks like a hospital room, but not as bleak. It’s got its charm, but it also says “this isn’t your home”: besides the bed, there’s a sofa and a desk, but the desk is empty. There’s something on the sofa, but with so little light, Tony can’t make out what it is. There’s also a trash can, but it’s empty as well. And there are no pictures or other decorations on the walls, which seem to be painted white, but Tony isn’t sure due to the poor lighting. They could be peach or light pink all the same. Tony turns to look at the bed. It’s got barely any bedclothes on it: just a light sheet. No wonder, Tony thinks. It’s like 86ºF inside. Haven’t these people heard of AC? _‘Course they haven’t. They’re evil_ . Next to the bed there’s a minimalist nightstand with a futuristic-looking lamp, which doesn’t seem to have any switches to turn it on or off. _So the room must be sound activated_ , Tony bets. He claps his hands twice and light fills the room, not only from the lamp, but also the ceiling lights. He will find out later how to turn on only one of them. He inspects the room once more. There doesn’t seem to be any apparent cameras and there is no button on the windows after all, so they must be sound-activated as well. “Blinds open”, he tries, to no avail. “Open blinds”, “open window”, he tries again, but nothing happens. He turns to inspect the room one last time and then he sees it. It’s there, on top of the sofa, perfectly folded in a square. There is no mistaking it: it’s Captain America’s uniform. Next to it is Captain America’s helmet and down on the floor, under the furniture, are Captain America’s boots. Steve’s entire star-spangled pajamas are here. Why? Is… is Cap here? He calls for his ex-partner, but no one answers. Tony looks again at his own body. The biggest muscles he’s seen on a human being (except maybe for Thor and Hulk, although Thor is the Guy of Thunder and Banner barely qualifies as human anymore), a six-pack that can wake-up the dead, and a pair of lower limbs owned by someone who definitely didn’t skip leg day. And then it dawns on him. _No. It can’t be._ Tony turns around looking for a mirror but there’s none to be found. He walks through the room, stumbling (although he seems to be getting the hang of walking again), looking for something to reflect himself on. And then, on the other side of a corner leading to the door he finds the bathroom. He storms inside (the lights are on already) and he encounters the unsettling truth: Steve Rogers is looking back at him from the bathroom’s mirror, complete with blonde hair and dreamy eyes. Somebody has performed Face-Off levels of plastic surgery on him to create a replica of Captain America. The theory is consistent with his inability to control his body properly, since it would have taken a lot of time in an induced coma to recuperate from the surgery.

“What the hell?”, Tony says out loud looking at his (Steve’s) reflection in the mirror, and out of his mouth comes the voice of Captain America, the one and only. How had he been so stupid not notice sooner that his voice was all wrong? Tony wouldn’t get that voice confused with any other. It is both manly and tender, peculiar to a guy that can lead a battalion and punch Hitler in the jaw while still looking hot, but who can also be the kindest person he’s ever met; both the lively tone of a guy in his early thirties, but also somehow able to convey the wisdom of an old man. But alas, Tony  had been so preoccupied with the poor state of his reflexes that he had completely missed that he was speaking with Steve’s voice.

Still looking at his reflection in the mirror, Tony realizes there are no visible scars from the operation. Was it possible to surgically change his vocal chords? Then Tony’s brain clicks and he comes up with an even more ominous hypothesis. What if...   _this_ is Cap’s body!

It takes a few minutes for Tony to calm down, during which time he moves from the bathroom to the sofa. He has never heard of mind transfer before. In fact, he’s quite positive it can’t be done. Tony knows there is no one inside your brain looking at a stream of pictures. There is no divide between the mind and the brain. Tony knows he _is_ , in fact, his brain. Everything else, his skull, his skin, his muscles, down to his toe nails are nothing but the shell in which his brain lives, evolved through billions of years to pass on his DNA. What we call the mind, Tony knows, is nothing but what the brain does and what the brain does can’t be transferred without… _without doing the same to the hardware_ . Then Tony finally understands the real reason why controlling Cap’s body has presented such a challenge. There is no mind transfer and you can’t swap brains either, but what you can theoretically do is exchange two people’s bodies. They’ve removed Tony’s brain and put it inside Steve. The realization sends goosebumps down Tony’s back. His hands are twitching. It started a minute ago, but only now Tony realizes it. Could Cap’s body be rejecting Tony’s brain? _Transplant rejection can be as high as 40% in the case of hearts_ , Tony remembers. No such statistic for brains is available, as this is the first time it’s ever happened. He is sweating more profusely now. His heart (Cap’s heart) is racing. He’s becoming breathless. The room is spinning again. Since the Chitauri’s failed invasion, Tony has become an expert on detecting when he’s about to have a panic attack. So when his chest begins to hurt, he knows. Tony knows his symptoms are psychological, for Cap’s body is the pinnacle of human achievement. The only way he could be out of breath would be if Tony’s brain was producing a psychosomatic effect. He thinks of Steve while looking at his suit, neatly folded to his side. And all of a sudden, he starts to laugh uncontrollably, imagining what Cap will think when (if) he finds himself inside Tony’s body. And he knows full well what Cap will think: that this is Tony’s fault. After Ultron, he can’t really blame him.

When the laughter stops, Tony’s feeling refreshed. He seems to have regained control over Cap’s body and he’s even feeling confident enough to try some of Cap’s signature moves (he’s been dying to throw that shield since the first time he saw Steve fight Loki —he never told Steve he had been watching from afar before intervening—. Too bad the shield was back home, resting against Tony’s lab desk). But above all, Tony is curious to know where Steve is hiding. He decides it’s time to investigate the place he is in, but before he can make a move, there’s a knock on the door and a voice with a heavy accent is heard from the other side.

“Captain, is everything OK?”, the voice says.

Tony is sure he’s heard that voice before but he’s never been good with names. Or faces. Or with remembering anything about people. Who could it be? Who is helping the fugitive Steve? Someone must’ve helped him to bust everyone out of prison. Tony decides there’s no point in prolonging the reveal, since nobody will know it’s really him inside Cap’s body (plus, this way he will confirm if his hypothesis is true after all). He tells the man on the other side to wait a moment, quickly puts on Steve’s costume and opens the door. A black, tall man, with an innocent, yet determined expression is looking at him from the corridor. He’s wearing a weird-looking black robe with a high collar. It’s the Panther-dude… T’chill? T’chalka? T’Challa! It’s T’Challa, the recently ascended Wakandan king.

“Greetings”, says Tony, trying to decide how Steve would greet someone. T’Challa is looking suspicious.

“Do you have any problems?”, he asks.

“No, no, I’m peachy”. _Peachy_. Great.

“Because one of the guards says he heard strange noises coming from your room” T’challa insists.

“It was just the TV”, Tony says instinctively.

“You don’t have a television in your room”, T’challa replies. The man makes Nick Fury seem like Chris Rock.

“Right” Tony says, “I meant in my sleep. I was having a dream about watching TV and I was talking in my sleep. It was more like a nightmare”.

“I didn’t take you for a man with a troubled spirit”, says the king. Tony has the impression that T’challa is the living incarnation of his nation’s feline mascot. He’s collected and curious, and he seems to be on the hunt permanently.

“Well, I did go a little too hard on Tony, don’t you think? I mean, two bodybuilders against one senior citizen? That’s low. Also, I lied through my teeth, so… I’d say that warrants at least a couple of nightmares at a minimum”, Tony says. He knows he isn’t sounding like Steve at all, but he’s never been one to measure his words. He’s always been more of a “talk first, apologize later” kind of guy.

“Your friend… he shouldn’t be responsible for what Hydra did to him. He is a victim as much as... ”, T’Challa says.

“He is not a victim”, Tony says, raising his voice without intending to. He needs to keep his emotions in check better, but for some reason, he is having even more trouble than usual. “I meant to say, he is a victim. But that doesn’t mean Tony is wrong either. Maybe Bar...Bucky should be trialed, after all. I just can’t accept it because he’s my friend”.

T’Challa seems to accept Tony’s words at face value and moves on to the next topic.

“If that is what you think, maybe you should come with me”.

Outside the room, everything is designed exactly the same as inside: white walls and floors as clean as a hospital. Tony finds himself amazed by the technology that he is able to glimpse as they walk through the inner halls. Light seems to be shining out of some walls, because Tony can’t seem to find the sources of light. Statues of black panthers are strategically place every certain feet and you can see some paintings of the African leopard as well.

“Speaking of Stark”, T’challa says, after a few minutes “we are currently monitoring him so that we’ll know if he makes a move. We are certain he doesn’t know you’re here yet”.

_Think again, buddy_ , Tony thinks and almost fails to stop a smile from forming on Cap’s face. As people walk past them, they seem interested in him. It takes only a millisecond for him to remember is not really _him_ who they are interested in, but Captain America.

“Great”, Tony says. And deciding now is as good a time as any, he makes his move. “What about Ba… Bucky?”. He tries to ask the most ambiguous question he can think of to conceal his lack of knowledge regarding the whereabouts of Barnes.

“Yes. In fact, that is why I need you today.” They come out of the corridors and into a big hall with a line of windows facing east. It is almost morning outside, though the sun is yet to rise. Out the windows, Tony can see the jungle, its exuberant foliage rivals any type of forest he’s seen before. The contrast with the inside of the facility is striking. The mismatch of nature and technology certainly makes (what Tony assumes to be) the Wakandan king’s palace even more futuristic looking.   
  
“I wanted to inform you”, the Black Panther continues,  ”that Barnes wishes to be put in  suspended animation again”.

Now they are crossing some sort of laboratory. There’s lines of Wakandan natives working on computers very much like those used by Stark Industries, but locally-manufactured, Tony assumes. People outside Wakanda don’t seem to know much about the African country and they appear to be very protectionistic of their economy. There’s a series of odd-looking pods standing in the room, several meters apart. And then Tony sees him.

“I thought you should consult with your friend before going to sleep, Mr. Barnes”, the king says, pointing at Tony. “I think you two have a lot to talk about”.

Tony wonders if Cap’s blue eyes are shining right now. Barnes is there. The Winter Soldier, his parent’s murderer is right there, in front of him, sitting on an examination table. Tony knew it was a possibility, the most likely scenario, but seeing him with his own… with Cap’s eyes…  That’s right. Now that he’s inside Steve’s body, there’ll be no one trying to stop him taking the criminal to justice. The Panther might present a problem, but he’s confident Cap can take him. He will stop the bastard from trying to run and hide into cryosleep again and he will take him to face justice… or he will avenge his mother by himself if he has to.

Barnes smiles at the sight of Steve’s body. Tony can’t keep a calm expression any more.

 _  
“You seem mad. I suppose you’re going to try and stop me”,_ he says, still smiling. Tony’s been eager to try Cap’s moves. The shield is gone, but Steve’s body is a living weapon. Barnes’s missing one arm. T’Challa is in his civilian clothes. It’s now or never. The sun is rising in the Wakandan horizon as Tony decides to make his move. where’s Steve?


End file.
